Opinion: 'Israel has already lost the Gaza war. It just doesn't know it yet'
In the latest episode of the TV game show, "The White House on Uber: How to pre-purchase a US President", it appeared, fleetingly, as if the host was reading from the right script.
US President Donald Trump said in Saudi Arabia that liberal interventionism was a disaster. That’s true. He said you can’t break and remake nations. Post-Soviet Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen are each testimony to that.
He stopped bombing Yemen and reversed decades of sanctions on Syria, blocking in the process two of Israel’s key routes to regional dominance: dividing Syria and starting a war with Iran.
I say fleetingly because - as Iran has been through this script many times before in negotiations over its nuclear programme - what a US president promises and what he delivers are two different things.
Not least of those to be blindsided by Trump’s announcement halting Syria sanctions were his own officials in the US Treasury. It turns out that the cessation of the multi-layered sanctions piled on Syria since the US first put the country on its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1979 is not so easy, nor will it be rapid or comprehensive.